Anchor handling support
UK-headquartered Marine and Towage Services Group Ltd. (MTS) has supported Netherlands-headquartered shipbuilder Damen during sea trials of its latest offshore cabling vessel, ‘Maersk Connector’.
During the two-week testing period, MTS Vigilant, a Damen Shoalbuster, undertook essential anchor handling work to test the capabilities of the new vessel’s advanced mooring systems ahead of her handover to end client Maersk Supply Service and charterer DeepOcean.
Current and anticipated growth in the offshore energy sector throughout European waters continues to drive demand for versatile subsea support vessels to carry out critical cable laying and interconnection work. These large vessels must be equally capable of keeping position in the deep-water environments of new offshore wind farms and working closer to shore in the proximity of onshore substations.
As such, modern cable laying vessels such as Maersk Connector are not only fitted with Dynamic Positioning (DP) to address the challenge of working far from shore, but also equipped with sophisticated multi-point mooring systems making use of a number of anchors to allow increased manoeuvrability closer to shore.
During the comprehensive sea trials of the vessel early 2016, MTS was engaged to provide anchor-handling support as Damen tested and calibrated this complex anchor system, running and positioning anchors as required.
By Jake Frith
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